[DeepL Translation - needs review] Volume 1 Introduction: It is the last spring, just before the world is destroyed and the earth is ruled by vampires. Ichise Guren enrolls in a training school for sorcerers in Shibuya. The students at the school are all elite children of famous families in the world of witchcraft. Glen, who comes from a lowly branch of the family, has big ambitions in his heart, but he spends his time being ridiculed as a bum. But then a classmate appears, claiming to be th...
Entertainment: This is the origin story of グレン, one of the characters from 終わりのセラフ. I knew the anime, so I already knew that I would like the setting and characters and as a result this review is obviously biased. In the end, if you liked the manga or anime, you are probably also going to like this book. Because this is an origin story, it does not require any previous knowledge and could also be read as a first entry in the franchise. But I assume it would be less interesting without knowing what the future has in store for the main character.
In general, the story is fast-paced, entertaining and never gets dull. My main problem was that the writing seemed a little simplistic (the author spells out absolutely everything and leaves nothing to the imagination). I would say it is probably aimed at a ~12-14 y/o audience, which was a bit too young for me.
Language Learning: A mixed bag in terms of difficulty. On one hand the sentences are very easy and 95% of the vocabulary is very easy, too. On the other hand, the remaining 5% of words are rather low-frequency magic-related terms. It was basically a really easy read until every time somebody started talking about magic, then suddenly I had to look up every other word. Besides this, there is a lot of furigana (and it gets repeated on every new page), again consistent with a younger target audience.